"So how are you enjoying your new electric car?"

File that under "H" for HEAR, QUESTIONS YOU NEVER.

Truth is, we've been harping about the need for a low-pollution electric alternative to the internal combustion automobile for decades now -- and they're still not what you'd call ubiquitous. If you see an electric car at all, likely it is at an auto show, as a nonproduction prototype, or in a race on the quad by engineering students.

This is passing strange, because we all know electric cars are good for the environment, and government has not been shy about putting muscle behind its preference for electric cars. Smoggy, cloggy California leads the pack with its requirement that 2% of vehicles sold in the state be electric or hybrid electric.

Electric cars are quiet, peppy, and provide better stereo sound than regular cars (no engine noise to compete with). The Big Three carmakers do have production models, including General Motors' EV1 (http://www.autorevista.com/articles/ar/ev1.htm), which sells through Saturn agencies and looks positively zippy.

So why haven't we made the switch to electric cars? It's because, comparing them head to head against our gas-driven cars, they're slower, harder to stop, heavier (1600 pounds of battery), more expensive, and they die if you drive them an inch beyond their daily 75-mile maximum.

Oh, and there's a sticker price of around $100,000 for the privilege of putting up with these shortcomings.

Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, in Minneapolis recently to discuss his book The Innovator's Dilemma at The Masters Forum, thinks we have to stop comparing the two kinds of cars head to head. He framed the issue in terms of conventional versus "disruptive" technologies.

A disruptive technology, Clayton said, is one of those upstart technologies that the establishment dismisses out of hand, but which go on to kick the establishment in the rear. The PC was a disruptive technology -- cheap and functional, it beat up on technologies which were better in every conventional way -- mainframe and mini-mainframe computers.

The first dinky Hondas and Toyotas, scarcely roadworthy at first, were likewise disruptive -- because of their affordability. Amazon, the online bookstore, didn't look promising the day it went up, but now it's publishing's proverbial 800-pound canary -- it sits wherever it wants.

What would it take, Christensen asked, to make the despised electric car a disruptive technology like the fledgling PC, Toyota, and Amazon.com?

The problem with electric cars is really not their technology at all, said Christensen. It's the way we think about them. Currently, we do everything possible to make them an annoyance. "We should buy them because they're good for us", is what it boils down to.

Car companies, which have always packed more horsepower under the hood than can be legally used, aren't good at thinking freshly about cars designed to be less powerful.

They conduct market research showing that consumers want cars that accelerate quickly and can run for two days without recharging. And the technology still isn't there for that kind of power.

But what if someone else did the fresh thinking? That's what a colleague of Christensen's, Jeff Thorsen, did in a recent study of electric cars and consumer tastes.

Where could you make use of a car that doesn't go too quickly, and that has to be home by midnight or it coasts to a stop? Would parents of teenagers go for such a vehicle?

Or how about senior citizens, who just need a glorified golf cart to putter around their retirement villages, to get back and forth from OTB?

How about for use as family in-town car, for making short trips to the grocery store? Or for the commute to work?

How about gridlocked downtowns, where cars have no hope of ever making it out of second gear anyhow?

With these modest ambitions, the 1,600 pound battery, and the $100,000 price sticker, are no longer necessary.

Recall the story of the humble transistor, Christensen said. Appliance makers dissed transistors because they were unreliable in the early going. But marketers snatched the issue out of technologists hands, and gave the idea a fresh spin. What if transistors were used in less mission-critical products at first -- like pocket radios, and hey, how about hearing aids?

The moral of this story? If we want electric cars to succeed, don't leave their success to General Motors, or the Sierra Club, or the State of California.

Make 'em for teenagers. Paint 'em wiggy colors. Tack on a Swatch roof. And stand back.